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Woods (b. 1963) earned her arts education at California Polytechnic State University; the Studio Art Centers International in Florence, Italy; and the California College of the Arts in Oakland, where she earned her B.F.A. In addition to exhibiting with George Billis Gallery, Woods has displayed her art at Quidley & Company Fine Art in Boston (2012); Stewart Gallery in Boise, Idaho (2012); the Boise Art Museum (2010); and many other fine art venues.

On a crystal-clear June evening in summer 2013, the sun is setting in Marfa, Texas, and a dozen CCA students -- together with a dozen more students from two art schools in the Netherlands -- are settling into the evening rhythms of their tent city.

The tents are cozily nestled in the courtyard of a former officer’s club, long abandoned by the US military. Elsewhere in the building complex, an old bar has been converted into an ad hoc Internet lounge. A spookily empty ballroom houses a broken-down old piano. The kitchen has accommodated the making of many a communal dinner.

Born in Nigeria, raised in Alabama, and trained at the Bay Area's California College of the Arts, Odutola draws on references as diverse as her upbringing, from animated Japanese serials and African carvings to the sinews of anatomical diagrams.

For Bay Area native John Chiara (MFA 2004), who is preparing to create a series of photographs in and of New York, swapping the Bay Area for the Big Apple presents a few challenges.

The issue is not at all about tackling New York's art scene; having had 2013 shows at Pier 24 Photography and the de Young in San Francisco, as well as at galleries in Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Zurich, it's clear that he is already coming into focus for an increasing audience worldwide.

Rather, New York will be a challenge in terms of the subject matter it offers up, given that until now Northern California has been such a looming presence in Chiara's work. The Bay Area infuses the photography of this San Francisco-born artist like the terroir of a vintage bottle of Saint-Emilion.

Maybe the zombie paintings can also make a sort of meta-statement about art itself. “In grad school at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, where I’m based now, my professors and I often debated whether painting could be considered a “zombie” medium," Pfau says, "with some art critics declaring it dead, while others saying that it has been brought back to life.”

Wenxin Zhang (MFA 2013) is always redefining her reality. In her writings and photography, she describes her experiences&mdash growing up in China, her current life in San Francisco, and her personal relationships—in a voice that is melancholy and surreal. Images of fall leaves in an industrial landscape are juxtaposed with a young boy’s glassy stare. A description of nocturnal wanderings illuminates the artist’s haunted sense of displacement wherever she goes.

Zhang has exhibited her work throughout the United States. Here she discusses her future projects and reflects on how her time at CCA has shaped her practice.

Since I was little, I was always longing to go to a faraway place—to be a stranger in a foreign country. I was unsatisfied with my hometown of Hefei. It’s a smaller, inland Chinese city. Young souls would leave for a bigger place after high school, and there was nothing new really going on. I felt so trapped by the place.

My father was a journalist for a local radio station. He traveled a lot and often took me with him. In 2004 he gave me a digital camera, and I used it every day. I would take photos and try to interpret my environment, to create a new little world with my camera in order to get away from the mundane. When I was in high school I would take bus trips with my best friend to the boundaries of our hometown—to the suburbs and the countryside. Student bus tickets are very cheap, so we would go the furthest distance we could by bus and take pictures of each other as our own story characters.

So don't miss this Thursday's "METAMORPHOSIS," when the talented artist/designers from the California College of the Arts transform the Academy (and possibly you) into something unexpected. Explore a multitude of industrial, interaction, illustration, fashion, furniture and graphic designers from CCA as they showcase an amazing, cutting-edge array of work, highlighting new technologies and innovative ideas that explore the concept of metamorphosis.

Three of the four winners of the 2012 SECA Art Award are CCA affiliates: Zarouhie Abdalian (MFA 2010) is an alumna, Josh Faught is on the Textiles faculty, and Jonn Herschend is a former faculty member and visiting artist. The award, given every two years by SFMOMA, honors Bay Area artists.

This SECA exhibition catalogue features interviews and texts by the award curators Jenny Gheith and Tanya Zimbardo (MA Curatorial Practice 2005), documentation of the commissions, and illustrations of previous work.